Thread: Some frustrations

Dry conditions are not always ideal for log storage. We ofen have to water spray during summer and I have often buried cedar for summer.

I sort of guessed that might have been part of the problem.

The other thing is that the few boards I cut from Melaleuca re OK. Perhaps relieving the tresses by cutting boards from the green timber is also a good idea.

Artme, sounds like a few disappointments. I've had mostly good luck with my stash - my worst experience was losing a lovely chunk of figured Maple (Acer, not Qld), not to drying degradation, but #*##* termites.

Every piece of wood is different, and you may just have been unlucky, or perhaps some of your bits had already damaged themselves before you got hold of them? I know that she-oak has to be broken down and sealed within minutes (literally) of felling, and dried very slowly if you want more than pen-blank sizes. Or at least the stuff growing up on the old farm needs that sort of treatment. But I once got hold of a Bull oak tree that had been killed by lightning and had been standing in the paddock with great splits down one side for a year or more. I thought the remaining wood would be useless for anthing but firewood, but to my surprise I got quite a few big, sound, chunks out of it. Several of those have made excellent big bench screws for vaious projects.

So I find it hard to predict what will dry well & what won't. Most dry hardwood makes excellent fuel for MILs wood heater, if nothing else, so I reckon it's always worth trying...

Cheers,

Old carpet underlay tossed over the logs helps a lot in dry or windy conditions.

Shame it's no good, but even cracked stuff can look good when combined with a bit of coloured resin

Those boring timbers can be good if post or pre turning features are added - burning/painting/highlighting/inserts/laminates etc. Alternatively you can put them on some good green mouldy concrete, or wet spongy ground, to promote spalting etc.

As for drying, especially in QLD, in really dry and hot weather I spray with Boron. Apart from re-wetting them, it gets sucked in, keeping the bugs away. Covering them can promote rotting and mould, but this can be either a bad thing, or a good thing

Part of my reason for being so ruthless is that we are moving house and I didn't want to pay cartage on a stack of potentially useless timber.

I had to switch off the Bower Bird gene, otherwise the tears might have flowed!

I have found a really interesting Acacia sp. in amongs the pile. Basically only good for pen blanks, knife handles etc. The grain is really attractive and quite pale for Acacia. I am going to try cutting some blanks across the grain and turning them. Should look really good.

I have one piece of a Qld. Backwood that a mate and I cut up some years back. It has the darkest colour of any Blackwood I have seen - true Blackwood!! This piece is also very dense and hard.

Some of the failures were:
Native Gardinia- Borers loved it!!
Bottlebrush - Checked and split like buggery and had uninteresting grain.
Tuckeroo; - totally bland but turns well.
Lyche; - split like all blazes but is dense and nice to turn.When we retrieved this tree we cut it into lengths. By the time we finished the second cut for each length, the other end was splitting!
Tipuana Tipu: Only had branch pieces and they proved to be not worth the scavanging. Apparently good sized trunk timber is good to -work with.

I think part of my problem also arose because I scavanged lots of branches. Obviously the stress in branch timber makes them behave in unpredictable ways.